"With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;

I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

"Our task is hard, with sword and flame
To hold thine earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep
Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep."

Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garmenthem,

For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he, "The images ye have made of me!"

ODE

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON

The public system of water works in Boston dates from October 25, 1848, when with much ceremony the water of Lake Cochituate, formerly called Long Pond, was turned into the reservoir which then occupied the site of the present extension of the State House, and a stream was conducted into the Frog Pond on Boston Common, where the pressure gave head to a fine jet. Besides the Ode, a selection was sung from the oratorio of Elijah, and addresses were made by the mayor and the chairman of the water commissioners.

And, bright as Noah saw it, yet

For you the arching rainbow glows, A sight in Paradise denied

To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip,

You seized and sent me o'er the wave, Ungrateful! in a prison-ship;

But I forgive, not long a slave, For, soon as summer south-winds blew, Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I'm fit,

Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit,

Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate

I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait

To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND

THE same good blood that now refills
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins,
The same whose vigor westward thrills,
Bursting Nevada's silver chains,
Poured here upon the April grass,
Freckled with red the herbage new;
On reeled the battle's trampling mass,
Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain; — that sturdy blood
Was meant to make the earth more green,
But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here: to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O'er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true
To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew,
They fought as suits the English breed:

To keep the Past upon its throne;
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill
Sends up to fire the heart and brain;
No stronger purpose nerves the will,
No hope renews its youth again:
From farm to farm the Concord glides,
And trails my fancy with its flow;
O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs,
Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right,
Where sleep the heroic villagers
Borne red and stiff from Concord fight;
Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun,
Or Seth, as ebbed the life away,
What earthquake rifts would shoot and run
World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought,

According to their village light;
'T was for the Future that they fought,
Their rustic faith in what was right.
Upon earth's tragic stage they burst
Unsummoned, in the humble sock;
Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first
Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw
Dice charged with fates beyond their ken,
Yet to their instincts they were true,
And had the genius to be men.
Fine privilege of Freedom's host,
Of humblest soldiers for the Right!
Age after age ye hold your post,

Your graves send courage forth, and might.

ΤΟ

WE, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.

Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year

Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides,
And less the chillier heart aspires,
With drift-wood beached in past spring-
tides

We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night.

It was not so- we once were young When Spring, to womanly Summer turning,

Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed

That earth could be remade to-morrow; Ah, why be ever undeceived?

Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring,
Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving;
Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
The victory 's in believing.

FREEDOM

In a letter to Mr. Norton, written June 29, 1859, Mr. Lowell refers to English comments on the Austro-Italian war, then in its early stages, and alludes to a quotation which Mr. Bright had made from his writings. "But," he says, "I fear he thinks me too much of a Quaker. In my Poems there are some verses on Freedom' written in '48 or '49. They ended thus as originally written. I left the verses out only because I did not think them good,-not because I did not like the sentiment. I have strength of mind enough not to change a word though I see how much better I might make it." He then copies the lines which below are separated from the poem by a long dash, and adds: "I think it must have been written in 1848, for I remember that, as I first composed it, it had 'Fair Italy' instead of 'Humanity.'

ARE we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest

In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind?

Freedom is recreated year by year,
In hearts wide open on the Godward side,
In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling
sphere,

In minds that sway the future like a tide. No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;

She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;

Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading morn - ward through the dew:

Before the day had risen, she was gone.

Still there's a charm ungranted, still a grace,

Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;

'T is but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to

see

On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm

Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak,

And what he thought an island finds to be
A continent to him first oped,—so we
Can from our height of Freedom look along
A boundless future, ours if we be strong;
Or if we shrink, better remount our ships
And, fleeing God's express design, trace
back

The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophettrack

To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day,

And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh

In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out.

Most gracious are the conquests of the Word,

Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace

Yet, Freedom, thou canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch,

This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch.

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make;

The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break!

Thinking the cisterus of those Hebrew

brains

Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought,

Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire,

Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire

To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

God is not dumb, that He should speak no more;

If thou hast wanderings in the wilder

ness

And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less,

Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,

Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK

"Don't you like the poem [Beaver Brook] I sent you last week? I was inclined to think pretty well of it, but I have not seen it in print yet. The little mill stands in a valley between one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and if you will make me a visit this spring I will take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you 6 the oaks' - the largest, I fancy, left in the country." Letters I. 149. The poem was sent to Mr. Gay for the Standard. These oaks are now known as the Waverley Oaks, and are to be preserved.

HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill,
And, minuting the long day's loss,
The cedar's shadow, slow and still,
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.